Trademark and packaging for handcrafted silver jewelry

Alison Ivy is a new line of handmade silver jewelry available in three styles aimed at the mature American woman seeking versatile elegance for casual and special occasions.

Quarterly reports for a group of several mutual funds

Artisan, a diverse group of mutual funds, needed a concise and intelligent document to illustrate quarterly figures to the board of directors for each of its ten funds. This document employs a standardized typography and artwork system for its graphs. Through this system the production of all forty pages worth of reports can be completed in two working days.

Retirement planning solutions and investment tools

For years BusinessLogic has served as a forecasting consultancy to major institutions like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and TransAmerica and those years behind the scenes have fostered a wealth of underlying technology and forecasting abilities. The company is now applying some of that brain capital towards new suites of public-facing products in the areas of retirement planning and portfolio benchmarking.

A comprehensive visual history of Chicago design

Originally started in 2003 the Chicago Design Archive is a collection of Chicago design work spanning almost one hundred years. In addition to a visual redesign and data restructuring new features like cross-linking and a remastered image library have also been implemented.

Visual walkthrough of enterprise-grade installation tools

The Enteo Management Suite application allows IT managers to administrate and track the installation of Citrix Server across several or hundreds of servers at once. This Flash module walks viewers through a general explanation of how the software manages the heavy duty task.

Corporate rewards provider

Helping Hand Rewards connects social sector products with corporate gift and reward programs. Instead of the usual iPods and gift certificates companies use to reward their employees they can instead give luxury gifts such as bath products and foods produced locally and internationally through organizations staffed by underpriveleged men and woman.

Icon system for an international mid-market investment bank

These icons represent the ten key industries in which Lincoln, a mergers and acquistion firm, conducts the most business. They are meant for multipurpose applications such as the web, advertising and powerpoint.

New York City touchscreen subway map concept

Manipulating data by touch is becoming more and more commonplace these days. While riding the NYC subway I thought about how convenient, time and money-saving it would be to have interactive maps. Schedule change notices wouldn’t have to be printed and riders could look up more detailed information on their route. Being that New York is a very multi-national city a user could also change the entire map to whatever language they need with the touch of a single button. Ideally the map would use OLED behind a quartz composite surface with a touch-sensitive overlay but there's always the issue of vandalism.

Identity for a trading analytics and consulting group

Quantitative Services Group specializes in analytics and research tools that help institutional traders control transaction costs by analyzing market trends. The company had matured into a major league competitor with other analytics software companies and needed a new trademark and sales materials to reflect their modernity and market relevance.

A little intranet for a little company that does big things

ROI required a unique intranet that allowed them to collaborate with their partners and clients. Maintaining brand look and feel was a must because the system was also a key selling point so off-the-shelf solutions wouldn't work. After creating a list of features a site structure and design was developed that encompassed the look of the master brand and also allowed the flexibility to co-brand certain accounts. The entire project was up and running in two months.

I accomplish very complex things with a few simple principles

Asking many questions has brought the clients I've served a lot of good things. I believe the first step in the process of creating any trademark, site or tool is identifying the needs of the audience and establishing the proper language and tone to reach them. By setting those goals it becomes easier to segment the process for any project and it's easier for a designer to justify their decisions.

Stuff about me

Born and raised in Chicago I have spent most of my life in its various neighborhoods from the blue-collar bungalows of my childhood on the southside to the trendy enclaves I currently work and live in. During my youth I held many different jobs such as construction hand, photo lab technician, digital image retoucher, photographer and videographer. Those past experiences helped shape the way I view design from an artistic and business standpoint today. They also remind me that this is really what I want to do for the rest of my life.